The Giant Straw Safari
In the city of Niigata, Japan, farmers have a problem: what do you do with a mountain of leftover rice straw? Their answer is to build a giant straw safari! Instead of throwing the straw away, artists and students use it to build massive animals that are as tall as a three-story house. Imagine walking through a park and suddenly coming face-to-face with a 9-metre-tall gorilla made entirely of grass! These sculptures are so big they have to be built on giant wooden skeletons so they don't blow away in the wind. Learn more!
Wee Ones
A giant straw gorilla has 2 massive arms and 2 massive legs. How many limbs is that in total? Use your counting-on skills!
Little Kids
One straw sculpture of a lion is 9 metres tall, and a sculpture of a gorilla is 6 metres tall. If you stacked the gorilla on top of the lion, how tall would they be together?
Big Kids
It takes a team of students about 2 weeks to build one giant sculpture. If there are 7 days in a week, how many days does it take to finish the sculpture?
The Sky's the Limit
A sculpture uses rice straw and wood in a ratio of 10 to 1. This means for every 1 kilogram of wood in the skeleton, they use 10 kilograms of straw. If the wooden skeleton for a giant eagle weighs 50 kilograms, how many kilograms of straw do they need?